1.2.13-Columbina
Brick!Club 1.2.13 Little Gervais I finished twelve early so I’d be able to get this one done in time and I still didn’t manage! It’s just such a big chapter with so much going on! And I love it so much! And everyone else has already said such intelligent things! The first matter of heartbreak is Valjean’s confusion. The Bishop’s act of kindness has literally turned everything he knew about the world upside down, and he’s angry about it, but he isn’t sure why. “''He could not have told whether he was touched or humiliated''.” At first it seems odd that he’s still capable of feeling humiliated, that Toulon has left him with enough dignity to do so. But his pride comes from his hatred, or rather, his hatred has turned into pride. When he puts his foot on Little Gervais’ money, it’s not because he needs the money any more, it’s not for the sake of crime, but just out of what has become instinctive hatred and anger towards everyone, even harmless children. Like when you’re in a bad mood and someone’s being cheerful at you and you just want to punch them in the face? (Hi, guys, I’m Columbina, I’m here to drink all the wine and give banal 21st centuries analogies, I’ll be here all year.) He’s not taking the money to take the money, he’s taking the money to… I suppose punish Little Gervais, just for existing and being cheerful and innocent? I think that was the habit that made the beast place his foot on the coin. …it behooved him now, so to speak, to mount higher than the Bishop, or fall lower than the convict; that if he wished to become good be must become an angel; that if he wished to remain evil, he must become a monster? I somehow never noticed this bit before, because it hit me like a ton of bloody bricks. Because, wow, yeah, that’s true? Like, you can’t be a really terrible person who has a bishop give you all these goodies and then go on to be a kind of okay bloke? You, yeah, something like that, you really do have to pay it forward. Also, can someone else please say something about how in the midst of all these super spiritual revelations, Hugo keeps throwing in science (like statics and chemical reagents) because I really like that. And then Valjean’s … conversion / revelation / choose another noun to suit your beliefs, just punches me right in my own spiritual spot and just keeps punching until I’m crying on the floor. (Actually, “punches you in the heart and then keeps punching” is a pretty accurate summary of the whole book.) (There was something in this chapter that made me think of a passage from The Screwtape Letters that I wanted to quote in this post, but now I can’t think of what the something was or what the passage was, so, sorry about that. Feel free to make guesses at what it was!) Edit: I was writing a reply to pilferingapples reply to sarah1281 when it came to me, and it got a bit long and not strictly related, so I’ll post it here instead of as a reply. I think the bit of Screwtape I wanted to talk about was Screwtape Proposes a Toast, which actually attributes this to envy, not pride, but lbh, they’re kind of inextricably linked - I don’t think you can really envy someone something if you don’t secretly think that you deserve it more, you know? It’s basically Tall Poppy Syndrome, but I think this was the bit I was thinking of before: The feeling I mean is of course that which prompts a man to say I’m as good as you. The first and most obvious advantage is that you thus induce him to enthrone at the centre of his life a good, solid, resounding lie. I don’t mean merely that his statement is false in fact, that he is no more equal to everyone he meets in kindness, honesty, and good sense than in height or waist measurement. I mean that he does not believe it himself. No man who says I’m as good as you believes it. He would not say it if he did. The St. Bernard never says it to the toy dog, nor the scholar to the dunce, nor the employable to the bum, nor the pretty woman to the plain. The claim to equality, outside the strictly political field, is made only by those who feel themselves to be in some way inferior. What it expresses is precisely the itching, smarting, writhing awareness of an inferiority which the patient refuses to accept. And therefore resents. Yes, and therefore resents every kind of superiority in others; denigrates it; wishes its annihilation. Presently he suspects every mere difference of being a claim to superiority. No one must be different from himself in voice, clothes, manners, recreations, choice of food: “Here is someone who speaks English rather more clearly and euphoniously than I — it must be a vile, upstage, la-di-da affectation. Here’s a fellow who says he doesn’t like hot dogs — thinks himself too good for them, no doubt. Here’s a man who hasn’t turned on the jukebox — he’s one of those goddamn highbrows and is doing it to show off. If they were honest-to-God all-right Joes they’d be like me. They’ve no business to be different. It’s undemocratic.” This is route Valjean could have taken in the face of the Bishop’s kindness, at the beginning of the chapter when he’s conscious of a sort of rage, this kind of wounded pride is the source. This is perhaps the route, say, Thenardier would have taken. And I know, I know we have puppy Valjean who has the lowest opinion of himself, who clearly doesn’t think he is as good as the Bishop, but… have you seen that post that’s like “I have low self-esteem but still think I’m better than everyone else”? I kind of think that’s Valjean right now. On the one hand, he wants to Take His Revenge Against Society, and that takes a sense of pride, albeit an injured one, that really is all about “I’m as good as you” (“I’m as good as you, but you starved me and then punished me disproportionately, so now I will punish you to make things even!”) but on the other hand, we have his innate affection and humble nature. Commentary Sarah1281 Thanks for explaining the whole Valjean-pride thing because I was just not getting that at all. I still don’t see why he must either be a monster or a saint from this point foward, though. It would be pretty lackluster if he thanked the bishop and went off to be just a normal member of society somewhere but why wasn’t he able to do that? It seems to me that even if his not going out of his way to be amazingly good meant that he hasn’t made up for his wrongs and so is still a bad person it wouldn’t make him even more of a monster than he was when he was hating the world and trying to hurt it. Columbina (reply to Sarah1281) Thank you for asking this, because it totally threw me. I hadn’t really thought about it, it just hit me as “Yes, absolutely”, even though I couldn’t say why. Now that I’ve actually thought about it, I think the nearest thing I can come up with is recovering alcoholics - you can’t go from being a hard core addict to a casual or social drinker, and I think that’s how it is with Valjean and sin. He can’t use the silver to go and become, well, basically one of the people who turned him away. You know, where he stops committing all the big sins, no more theft, no more contemplating murder/assault, but plenty of little sins. Instead, he has to cast all the evil/hatred out of him, every last bit, or its as though nothing changed at all. He has to let go of all of his hatred and forgive everyone, literally every last terrible guard at Toulon. He can’t go on and love 90% of his neighbours, but not that one guy who lives upstairs and plays piano loudly at 2am because he’s a dick. I’ve got two possible reasons for this, and can’t decide which I think is the primary reason - that, like an alcoholic, keeping any evil / hatred around him is going to make it too easy to slip into old habits, or that because of the Bishop’s kindness, any sin he commits now is going to be magnified tenfold. Either way, hatred is his addiction and he has to go cold turkey or OD. Pilferingapples (reply to Columbina's reply) Reblogging because Full Page Metaphor, and a very expressive one at that! Thank you for being so wonderfully eloquent, Columbina! Pilferingapples Oh I DO hope you’ll be here all year, your posts are always so wonderful! I hadn’t even considered the robbery of Petit Gervais as kind of punishment for the kid’s happiness, but that makes perfect sense. I feel like Hugo wasn’t drawing any distinctions between morality and science, really. Morality in Les Mis is part of The True, and if science is about finding out how things really work than Science is part of that, too. Knowledge isn’t just power, it’s kindness— I think that’s part of why we get a lovely emotional scientist in Combeferre, instead of the frequent Cold Nerd type. Also c’mon reagents are great metaphors. :P Columbina (reply to Pilferingapples) Thank you!! (Both for the compliment and the answer to my request!) I love when people combine religion/morality and science, for a lot of reasons that I won’t bore you with. But it’s not something I really seek out or do a lot of reading on, because I am the least science-y person in the world. So, yes, what you said. I’ve got a thing on the edges of my brain, about nature and science and naturally occurring phenomenon and Valjean’s reaction being equally natural, leading into something about literature and universality and something something.